Speak this morning at the CityCo ( City Centre Management Company ) annual review, a look back at how the city centre has performed over the past year, and a look forward to the prospects over the next twelve months. Co-incidentally the Council's Economy, Employment and Skills is taking a report this morning on city centre regeneration, a follow up to a presentation they had last month on economic development more generally across the city. That presentation talked about the potential to create 75,000 jobs in the city by 2015, but to get an idea of just how important the city centre is, 57,000 of those jobs are expected to be in it. This morning's review was opened by Rowena Burns, the chair of the CityCo board, and both she and I pursued a similar theme - times are tough but, in Manchester at least, there are grounds for cautious optimism.

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Full Council meeting today. The Council's business largely consists of receiving the minutes of the Executive Committee, Overview and Scrutiny Committees, and Licensing and Planning committees that have met over the last eight weeks. Although the minutes can be debated, thanks to a bit of misguided legislation by the previous government wholly supported by the present one, decisions, particularly decisions of the Executive cannot be overturned by the full Council. There are some major policy decisions reserved for the Council not least the budget but my view is that the inability to overturn or refer back Executive decisions is undemocratic.

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Or Downtown Manchester to be precise. Started the day at RBS's Deansgate offices this morning, not to protest at their Chief Executive's bonus though I'm very firmly in the camp that nobody actually " earns " that much, but to speak at a business breakfast organised by Downtown Manchester to launch their business survey. Passed on breakfast again as I'd long since had my daily porridge and honey, but was happy to support an event and an organisation that has a slightly left field approach to engaging with business. Also, for absence of doubt, happy to support RBS as one of the biggest employers in the city.

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Not even an attempt at any catch in today's heading. Got very energised yesterday evening at a meeting of the Environmental Advisory Panel ( EAP ). Meetings of the panel are more likely to be described as worthy and perhaps a little earnest rather than exciting, and Carbon Literacy doesn't exactly sound like a theme to set the pulse racing. Let me go back to Manchester's Climate Change Action Plan, Manchester - A Certain Future. The plan is described rightly as a stakeholder plan, because a whole range of individuals and groups were involved in writing it. That includes groups engaged in the EAP who continue to be involved in the delivery of the plan. One of the commitments in A Certain Future was that every Manchester resident should have an entitlement to a day's Carbon literacy training. A couple of members of the panel, Dave Coleman and Phil Korbel have, through a social enterprise company, done some work on this and last night Dave gave a report on the progress they have made.

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We have an all-party Members Review Panel that meets regularly to scrutiinise progress on the refurbishment of the Town Hall Extension and Central Library, as well as looking at the changes in working practices being trialled at 1st Street in preparation for the return to the Town Hall, although the changes are already bringing us significant benefits in improved efficiency and effectiveness.

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Started the day at Sunlight House for a business breakfast organised by Insider Magazine. Didn't have what would have been a second breakfast and in any case was there to talk and answer questions about the Manchester Family ie the arrangements we have in Greater Manchester to both formally and informally support sustainable economic growth in the city-region. Arrived there about 7.45am and left just after 9am so missed the deluge that descended on the city sometime in between but still not a lot of sunshine on the walk up to the Town Hall. Had the first Executive Committee of the new calender year this morning with surprisingly little debate about some very substantial items on the agenda.

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A wretched comment on the last post from Scrooge's mate Bob, referring to most people being back in work on January 3rd. For the record I didn't come back into the office until January 4th, though with the wonders of modern technology much of my " paper " work can now be done from pretty much anywhere in the world. However the requirements of public service meant that many Council staff were working throughout the Christmas and New Year period including on Christmas Day, and the same is true for many other parts of the public sector.I don't think there is any thing like enough appreciation of the commitment of many of our staff, and I'd like to say thank you to all of our staff working when the rest of us were enjoying our Christmas pud.

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First blog of 2012 so Happy New Year! 2011 was a pretty grim year and there is nothing to suggest that 2012 will be any easier, but Manchester (and its Council) came out of 2011 in far better shape than anyone might have expected and that's the task for the coming year - to do our best to ensure that Manchester and its people thrive, whatever is thrown at us. Of course, building a thriving city does need some long-term thinking and some innovative thinking.

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As mentioned yesterday, the last meeting of the year of the City Council's Executive Committee is this morning. Two of the items on the agenda, one regarding directly elected mayors, the other the Darra Singh interim report into this summer's " riots ", have already been widely discussed in the media so there is little to add here. The general consensus is that a directly elected mayor is a solution to problem Manchester hasn't got, and not necessarily a very good solution anyway. The Riots report is consistent with the evidence we gave to the Inquiry. As always, there are lessons to be learnt, but the Manchester response, community and Council, comes out pretty well.

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Although the Council Executive meets tomorrow, much of this week is about tieing up loose ends, emptying or at least checking there's nothing badly overdue in the in-tray, and making sure advice cases are up-to-date. So yesterday morning was a little bit out of the ordinary then, a trip for an early morning meeting at the Daresbury Laboratory. Science seems to becoming very much more popular nowadays. Engineering, Chemistry, and Physics - especially Physics - courses are heavily oversubscribed, and a good thing to. Economically and environmentally, we need more and more people able to invent and to innovate with ideas that help create a low-carbon knowledge based economy.

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